334 THE HOLARCTIC REGION. [CHAP. 



From a distributional point of view, the European Plistocene 

 elephants are of especial interest. Foremost and best-known of 

 these is the mammoth (Elephas primigeniiis], which, as stated in 

 an earlier chapter, was a very near ally of the existing Indian 

 species, although distinguished as we know from the evidence of 

 specimens preserved in the frozen soil of Siberia by its coat of 

 woolly red hair, among which were intermingled long bristly black 

 hairs. Curiously enough, traces of this woolly coat have been 

 detected in the Indian elephant, so that it is probable that this 

 species originated in some part of Asia where the climate is colder 

 than is that of India. Regarding the range of this species, 

 Professor Boyd Dawkins 1 remarks that "the mammoth is very 

 abundant in the caverns and river-deposits of Britain and of France, 

 and is known to have ranged over the Pyrenees into Spain, 

 from the discovery of specimens in the zinc-mines of Santander. 

 It has been proved by Prof. E. Lartet and Dr Falconer to have 

 lived in the neighbourhood of Rome when the volcanoes of central 

 Italy were active, and poured currents of lava and clouds of ashes 

 over the [site of the] imperial city. It is common in northern and 

 southern Germany, but it has not been found in Europe north of 

 a line passing through Hamburg, or in any part of Scandinavia or 

 Finland. It occurs in the auriferous gravels of the Urals ; and in 

 Siberia, as is well known, it formerly existed in countless herds, 

 being buried in the morasses in large numbers, in the same manner 

 as the Irish elks at the bottom of the Irish peat-bogs. The 

 admirable preservation of some of the carcases is undoubtedly due 

 to their having been entombed directly after death, and then 

 quickly frozen up, a process which need not necessarily imply 

 climatal conditions unlike those of the present time in Siberia." 

 That the mammoth ranged across Bering Strait into Arctic 

 America, is proved by the discovery of its remains in the frozen 

 soil of Eschscholtz Bay; but in the greater part of North America 

 it was replaced by the closely-allied E. columbianus. In eastern 

 Europe there existed a variety or species known as E. armeniaais, 

 of which the molar teeth still more closely resemble those of the 

 Indian elephant than do those of the typical form. The straight- 



1 Early Man in Britain (London, 1880), p. 106. 



